First, the POV Exporter is a plugin that I can't use - WINZIP says it's a
bad tar file (I always new tar was bad for me).
Second, it seems to like creating various Popsicle-hedrons, which look
nothing like the "cool-spaceship-ahedron" I have in my head. Is there a
tutorial I'm missing here?

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"Bryan Valencia" <pov### [at] spamgourmetcom> wrote:
> First, the POV Exporter is a plugin that I can't use - WINZIP says it's a
> bad tar file (I always new tar was bad for me).
> Second, it seems to like creating various Popsicle-hedrons, which look
> nothing like the "cool-spaceship-ahedron" I have in my head. Is there a
> tutorial I'm missing here?

First of all, you open the .tar file with wings. That is explained with the
download/installation readme, I think, but I don't remember correctly.

Second of all, using wings takes a little practice. I really got going after
reading every tutorial I could find after typing 'wings 3d tutorial' into
google.
You'll get it, it's got a pretty smooth learning curve.

Finally, Povray.binaries.images was probably not the best place for this
one. Utilities might have been better, but frankly I'm not that great at
finding the right group myself.

-s
5TF!

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Thanks.

Of course I don't care about learning WINGS, I just have a cool spacecraft I
designed on graph paper and I want to model it.  What I really want is a
brain interface that just knows what I want.

I'll reread the web page about the tar thing... I THOUGHT it said that the
file would not install correctly unless you uncompress it first.  Who knows,
maybe I was reading the linux directions or something.

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stm31415 is right, Wings3D will read the tar file directly and install the
plug in.

I could be wrong but I think the plug in doesn't work with the most recent
version, but I know it does with ver 0.98.22c.

Also, I find that even modest size model output will cause POV-Ray to crash.
This is because the export plug in prints each entire mesh component type on
one line. On a recent model one line in POV was over 85,000 characters in
length! To get around this problem I read the file into MS-Word and use
"replace" to add a return after arbitrary vertices.

For example: I have it search for

 5>,

and replace with

5>,^p

this makes Word add a line return to every vector ending with a 5,
sometimes I need to repeat with another number, like 0 or 3 to get
short enough lines not to choke POV.

Are these "Popsicles" in Wings3D or when rendered in POV?
It is likely that you are not yet use to the way Wings3D "smooths"
objects. You can bevel, add edges, or harden edges to control
final smoothed shape.

Harolddd


"Bryan Valencia" <pov### [at] spamgourmetcom> wrote in message
news:41c76165@news.povray.org...
> First, the POV Exporter is a plugin that I can't use - WINZIP says it's a
> bad tar file (I always new tar was bad for me).
> Second, it seems to like creating various Popsicle-hedrons, which look
> nothing like the "cool-spaceship-ahedron" I have in my head. Is there a
> tutorial I'm missing here?
>
>

Post a reply to this message

Thanks.

Of course I don't care about learning WINGS, I just have a cool spacecraft I
designed on graph paper and I want to model it.  What I really want is a
brain interface that just knows what I want.

I'll reread the web page about the tar thing... I THOUGHT it said that the
file would not install correctly unless you uncompress it first.  Who knows,
maybe I was reading the linux directions or something.

Post a reply to this message

Hi!
Did you try this procedure:
Wings3D (Export to Alias/Wavefront .OBJ) -> PoseRay (Export to POV-Ray)?

I used this technique and it worked fine (including corect UVs, and 
smoothing). However I have found that you get the best results object if you 
build the Wings3D mesh with the simplest polygons (quadrilaterals or 
triangles).


Matt Burns

"Bryan Valencia" <pov### [at] spamgourmetcom> wrote: 
news:41c76165@news.povray.org...
> First, the POV Exporter is a plugin that I can't use - WINZIP says it's a
> bad tar file (I always new tar was bad for me).
> Second, it seems to like creating various Popsicle-hedrons, which look
> nothing like the "cool-spaceship-ahedron" I have in my head. Is there a
> tutorial I'm missing here?

Post a reply to this message

Bryan Valencia wrote:
> First, the POV Exporter is a plugin that I can't use - WINZIP says it's a
> bad tar file (I always new tar was bad for me).

the pov exported exports to a .pov file.  Dunno where you are
getting .tar from.  When next you try to export (not Save, but
Export), explicitely type a ".pov" when you enter the file name.

> Second, it seems to like creating various Popsicle-hedrons, which look
> nothing like the "cool-spaceship-ahedron" I have in my head. Is there a

If you look at the .pov code that the wings3d exporter puts out,
you will see that it is exported surface normals.  wings3d lieks
things to be all smooth and rounded and it uses surface normals
during export to do this.  Simply remove the normal_indexes (or
whatever it is called, wings 3d is not on this machine yet) lines
and then you should be good to go in povray.

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Ok, I finally got Wings to do something, but I tell it to export to POV and 
it thinks for a few seconds and says FAILED TO EXPORT.

Here is the wings file, what's wrong???

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Attachments:
Download 'thing1.wings.dat' (22 KB)

Bryan Valencia wrote:
> Ok, I finally got Wings to do something, but I tell it to export to POV and 
> it thinks for a few seconds and says FAILED TO EXPORT.
> 
> Here is the wings file, what's wrong???

   I started using Wings3D with version 0.98.22c, which exports to POV 
without problem with the plugin. But every recent version I tried has 
this problem, so I decided to stick with 0.98.22c (anyhow I don't know 
still how to use more than half of the features, and that version rarely 
crashes for me).

--
Jaime

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Crap.  I don't have an older version.

This tool is falling into the "Phenomenally Powerful Yet Poorly Documented
and Buggy" category for me.

Here are the things I _love_ about it so far.

1. Drag-plus-type.  I can 'scale' something either the way I like by hitting
tab and typing the exact scale I want or I can eyeball it and use the mouse.
I have always liked POV because a 5 unit sphere is always exactly 5 units,
and most modelers like Truespace push you to eyeball it with the mouse.  I
can actually do it either way in Wings.

2. The 'line-around' feature.  I used this in the model I attached earlier.
It was simple.

---

Now.  I cannot for the life of me figure out how to attach bitmaps to the
surfaces, or even paint them with flat color.  But I'm sure it's powerful
and simple, if I can only find the magic keystrokes.

BUT: If they don't fix the exporter to POV, I can't use it.

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